Develop a brand new Standalone App vs Embedded App

dmzg10
Visitor
2 0 0

Hi,

 

I'm new to Shopify App Development. I want to build a custom application which let the end users (customers) of my company's store login into a simple dashboard and let them do a few actions (populate shopping cart with specific products...). I was considering building a Standalone app for this because my end users don't need to have access to the Shopify Admin. However, given that I HAVEN'T FOUND A SINGLE STANDALONE APP DEVELOPMENT TUTORIAL I guess I'm going to end up going for an Embedded app. What do you think?? Would you do the same?? Or you would push for Standalone despite of the lack of documentation. My new embedded app would block all normal Shopify Admin permissions (orders, reports, discounts, etc.) and would only allow access to this embedded app (is this technically possible??). Do you think this is the right decision??? I feel as if Shopify wouldn't want people to develop Standalone apps...

Thanks in advance 🙂
Replies 3 (3)

Leith
Shopify Partner
12 1 3

Hello Dmzg10,

 

Shopify promotes the development of embedded apps as they are inside the Shopify admin and easy for merchants to access. But still, you can create Standalone apps like we used to create other web applications with just normal OAuth process and query or mutate data using the Shopify api. 

Feel free to reply if you have any questions 🙂

 

Thank you

Leith

SamyBahaa
Visitor
1 0 0

Hi  leith,

 

i have a question regarding the standalone app. I have my own web application and i want to integrate it in shopify app store but as a standalone. once the customer cilck on install My app on shopify app store i want to redirect it to my own web application.

Can this be done..?

elijah-atamas
Shopify Partner
1 0 0

The application type only determines where store admins can see the user interface of your app - on the admin dashboard for Embedded apps, and on the external website for Standalone apps. There are other differences between Embedded and Standalone apps, but they are mostly related to how the app is built and its internal workings.

 

If you want to integrate your Shopify store with other platforms to allow cross-platform purchasing or adding to cart, this is known as a Sales Channel with cart permalinks in Shopify. In this case, the app must be Embedded. The Sales Channel will not block any normal Shopify admin permissions, such as orders, reports, and discounts.

 

To develop a Standalone app, make sure that it's allowed by Shopify. There are some cases when only Embedded apps can be used:

  1. Building App Extensions.
  2. Creating an app that embeds into the Shopify POS app.
  3. Building a mobile app builder that lets merchants create a mobile app based on their store.
  4. Building a Sales Channel with cart permalinks.
  5. Building Shopify Payments Apps that provide additional payment methods, perform specific operations on payment methods, and more.
  6. Building Shopify Post-purchase apps.

 

Once you've determined that a Standalone app is the right choice, set up Shopify OAuth to retrieve an access token after your app is installed. Then, use the access token to make requests to the Shopify API and connect your app's custom logic with a Shopify store.